1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to furnaces, and more specifically relates to combustion furnaces that burn fuel in a combustion chamber.
2. Background Art
Furnaces of various different sizes and configurations have been developed for the burning of fuel, such as large bales of hay. These furnaces typically have one door, or set of doors that cover an opening to the inside of the furnace. Fuel is loaded through this opening. These furnaces can consume large amounts of hay which results in large amounts of ash. Some quantity of ash can stay in the furnace without affecting the operation of the furnace, but after a period of time there is so much ash that the ash needs to be removed from the furnace. With only one access point in the furnace, the ash has to go out of the same door where the fuel comes in. This means a person has to get into the furnace and manually shovel out the ashes through the door, or use a piece of machinery to remove the ashes. Regardless of whether ash removal is done manually or by machine, the furnace must generally be allowed to cool to allow a person or machine to enter the furnace without risk of injury to a person or damage to a machine. It takes a long time after the fire in the combustion chamber is no longer burning for a large furnace to cool. This means the need to clean out ash from the furnace may result in the furnace being out of commission for a significant period of time each time it needs to be cleaned.
Whenever the furnace is out of commission, a more expensive heating system must be used in its place costing extra money. It would be very advantageous to have a way to clean out the ashes from the furnace without having to wait for the furnace to cool.
In addition, removing ashes from the same door where fuel is added creates a large pile of ashes that must be removed before new fuel is added to the furnace. If the ashes are not completely removed, the fuel being added may ignite from the hot ashes before the fuel is loaded into the stove.
One possible solution would be to put doors on both sides of the furnace so that you could load fuel from one side and remove ash from the other. However, from a practical standpoint, this creates a dangerous situation. If the furnace were not allowed to cool, when both doors were opened a wind tunnel would be created across the hot fuel and ash, providing a high supply of oxygen to the fuel and ash, and would literally result in a fire tunnel that would be a danger to people or property in the vicinity of the furnace.
Without a way to clean out a large furnace that burns fuel such as large bales of hay in a more simple, convenient and safe manner, the use of such furnaces will continue to be subject to the disadvantages discussed above.